Emails are not unlike pokie machines: While pokie machines captivate gamblers with intermittent rewards, email plays on the notion that an important message might arrive at any moment. Productivity guru Tim Ferriss says, 66 per cent of people read email seven days a week and expect same-day responses, while 56 per cent feels anxiety if they cannot access email. So, how do you know if your email-checking behaviour is bordering obsessive-compulsive?

7 Sign You’re an Email Addict

You wake your computer and check your email tally first thing in the morning.

Throughout the day you check your email every 10 minutes.

You check emails during commercial breaks of your favourite TV soap.

Even if you have no new mails, you check again, just in case you receive a message in that intervening split second.

If you don’t have roaming mobile email access, you set up an auto-responder even if you’re only offline for a morning. You check your email as soon as you walk back through the door.

You get withdrawal symptoms from going a full day without email – Anxiety, fidgety, jump at email notification buzz from other people’s devices.